HELLO…

If anyone is out there and you happened to have stumbled across my page, then ‘Hi and welcome to my first ever blog post’.

Wow, I can’t believe I am saying that!! What a massive moment. Me… a blogger, who would have thought!?

My name is Gem. I’m 29 and I live in a little village just outside Manchester, with my two favourites… my fiancé Dougie and our gorgeous little puppy Noah, or at least I think he’s a puppy… some days I’m not quite sure, he behaves more like a little devil!!

This time last year I was sat at a desk, working in the corporate world. Now I am sat here, in my home, self employed, with a full time career in property renovation and interior design, not to mention a whole load of new instagram friends and a website with my name on it.

I would never in my wildest dreams have predicted any of this, but my word, I can not tell you how excited and grateful I am for this journey. It is a serious case of ‘how the hell did this all happen?!’ Somebody pinch me.

My love for property, houses and interiors started when I was only a little girlie and I definitely have my Mum and Dad to thank… or possibly blame, I can’t quite work that bit out. My parents have been buying and renovating homes for as long as I can remember. It works out that I have moved house every 2 years of my life…. that’s 16 houses in total.

No jokes.

You must be thinking we are mental and we probably are. We must have packed and unpacked enough cardboard boxes to bridge the gap from here to the Moon… and back again. Jokes aside, I am so lucky to have grown up watching my Dad build such beautiful houses from the ground up and my Mum create the most amazing interiors within them… it’s safe to say they inspired me.

As inspired as I was, I never really believed renovating houses would become a career for me, I suppose I just kinda thought that if I was lucky then it might lead to me owning a ‘pretty’ house at some point along the way.

How wrong I was…

Houses have not only become my career, they have become my whole entire life. My own property journey started 6 years ago when Dougie and I bought our first ‘project’ and since then we have done 7 renovations together. It’s been ridiculously exciting, extremely fun, majorly terrifying and a little bit stressful, all rolled into one.

I would love to say that we are the renovation dream team, that we agree on everything and it’s all been completely smooth sailing so far. But as amazing as it has been and as much as we are partners in crime, in reality it’s a miracle we haven’t gone grey.

To give you a bit of an idea of how it goes in our house, an interior design conversation normally happens a bit like this…

I bat my eye lids and excitingly say… ‘Dougie, I love you, what do you think of this. I think it would look amazing in the house. Did I mention I love you…?’

What can I say, he’s predictable!! I mean, at least I always know what I’m going to get. He gets an ‘A’ for consistency, I will give him that. Unluckily for Doug, that consistency has prepped me well for the ‘interior battle’ over the years and I’m now a master at ‘playing the game’. So a few reverse psychology tactics later and everyone’s a winner… I get my way and Dougie gets another cushion to cuddle up to at night.

You are probably wondering what brought me to this point now? Or maybe you aren’t… but I figured I’d tell you anyway…

The answer is Instagram.

I started my Instagram account ‘at home with gem’ as a way of me collating pictures of our home, in hope that I could join in with the incredible house community that I have followed for so long.

The response to our home has been overwhelming and has quite honestly blown us away. We love our house and without sounding like a numpty, we are so proud of ourselves for creating it. But opening the doors to share it with the insta world was pretty nerve wracking.

When I hit ‘share’ on that first post I actually closed my eyes and squealed like a pig… but I didn’t need to. It turns out the insta world is an amazing place full of kind and lovely people…. and it has now led me to here, to tell you even more tales about our life and home.

Truth be told, I have always wanted to be a ‘blogger’, it has a certain a ring to it. Plus, it’s what the cool kids do, no?! Im sorry to say, I’m definitely no cool kid, but here I am, pretending to be, with my very own ‘at home with gem’ blog…

If by some miracle anyone is still with me, then firstly… thank you for sharing this moment with me… and secondly… you must be totally crackers!!

No, in all seriousness, I’m so super excited to share snippets of our life and home with you and I hope that I can keep you even mildly entertained in the process.

Hi there! I myself am a fellow ‘project’ addict and follow numerous accounts to get ‘inspiration’, I was thinking myself of creating some sort of page to document our efforts as I don’t think people understand the pain staking process and effort that it actually takes! Hopefuy your blog can keep me positive and remind me that, yet again there IS light at the end of the tunnel…free from 1930’s carpet, wood chip, bricks…and old smelly wallpaper!

Keep up the good work, your home is beautiful – as is your gorgeous puppy!

Hello, ha ha ha!! You are so right, it is painful and such hard work. The woodchip has to be my worst nightmare… Bain of my life that stuff. Thank you for being so lovely about our home, the blog and little Noah. It’s so kind of you. I wish you all the luck with your renovation and look forward to seeing it finished 🙂 xxxx

Have loved following your Instagram Gem. Beautiful house, if only mine could look like that – which I think will not be possible until Nathan has grown up and flown the nest!! Now, could you write my makeup blog for me?? Xx